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How to Lose 5 Pounds by The Weekend (The Quickest, Easiest Habit to Change to Lose Weight)

byAlexander Heyne

Follow this, and (depending on you and your current habits) you could potentially lose 2-7 pounds by the weekend.

I used to have a roommate in college that regularly drank 6+ cans of Coca Cola a day. He was highly addicted (even physiologically — he would get severe headaches from withdrawal), and his daily habits were reinforcing his soda habits. Obviously he was extremely overweight too. Now, although his coke consumption was insanely high — through the roof high — I became curious about drinking liquid calories.

Just how much weight would my roommate lose if he stopped drinking his 6 cokes a day? Even if he kept to his crappy diet, how much weight could he possibly lose just by eliminating that daily bad habit?

I decided to go to Starbucks and do some research.

Can I Get a Mocha-doppa-frappa-kappa-dappucino Please?

I like to do a lot of my afternoon and evening work in coffee shops. It’s quiet, but there are people. There’s that white noise that makes it not feel eerily quiet, but it’s quiet enough that I can focus on work.

Where I live, there are lots of mommies that get their mocha-doppa-frappa-kappa-dappucino in the afternoon.

Those are the “health conscious” mommies.

But every once in a while their kids come in. Guess what they order? The same sugary drinks — but they also whip out a soda at the table and sip it almost unconsciously while talking.

And it gets me thinking. How many times a day do I randomly drink something to keep busy? For kids at school it’s the same as people at their day jobs – it’s boring and repetitive, so we want something to do. We drink something.

Let’s assume a kid has one soda at school, and then one soda at home later. And we’ll tack on a Starbuck’s drink just for fun.

There are 7-8 glasses of orange juice in a carton. What’s 18/7? 2.5. So you drink about 2.5 oranges per glass of orange juice.

What would happen if you, instead, ate 2.5 of those large oranges instead (flesh, pulp & all)? You’d probably be pretty full. You probably couldn’t eat 5 large oranges. But you can easily drink 2 glasses of orange juice, which is essentially the sugar and flavor of 5 oranges.

When you eat the whole fruit it’s easier to get more of the good stuff — the pulp, the skin, the fiber, etc.

But when you drink the juice from Tropicana you’re basically just getting a sugary soft drink that has an almost identically fattening effect.

Problem #2:

Liquid carbohydrates (fruit juices, alcohol) are more fattening than solid carbohydrates. Since they’re liquid, they are more easily digestible by the body and thus are more easily digested, quicker. This which also has a greater effect on your insulin (potentially contributing to long-term fat gain).

… And the TV tells you that a glass or two of orange juice a day is healthy and good for you.

Back to The Equation: How Much Extra is Trophy Mom Sally Consuming From Her Latte and Orange Juice?

Let’s assume Sally is “healthy.” It’s flu season, so she’s making sure to drink two glasses of orange juice a day – need that Vitamin C right? Toss that onto her daily Mocha-doppa-frapp-kapp-dappucino she gets after her workout with her girlfriends.

Total = almost 500 extra calories that are “junk.” That’s almost 500 calories of sugar. = Weight gain.

So What’s the Secret?!

The secret is this: Don’t drink your calories.

And don’t buy into the myth that your orange juice is healthy. There, I told you.

Sally the “healthy,” Starbucks-drinking mommy is drinking 250 calories of orange juice a day (she thinks it’s healthy), and then another 250 calories from a Starbucks drink in the afternoon. And that’s assuming she doesn’t drink soda. If she has a soda while at work or in the afternoon, it’s getting close to 700 liquid calories a day that are almost all sugar.

That’s a nice recipe for solid long-term weight gain.

Okay, so I know I shouldn’t be drinking orange juice or my mocha Frappucino.

The next question is: how do I not drink orange juice at breakfast? Or how do I replace my afternoon soda / Frappucino habit?

So here’s how to go about it: instead of forcing yourself to say, “must… resist… frappucino’s… evil powers….” learn more about the psychology behind your habits. It has very little to do with willpower.

Maybe that afternoon frappucino is a pick-me-up, in which case, a coffee would work equally well. Maybe that afternoon coffee is an excuse to socialize – in which case, a phone call to a friend or a visit to a co-worker would work equally well.

When you drink soda (or juice or crazy lattes) and do the calories math, the potential weight gain is astounding! I once saw a video (i forget where…maybe TED) where the guy dumped out a whole wheelbarrow full of sugar on stage and said that was how much sugar the avg person eats in a year.

I think people forget that fruit juice is pretty high in sugar, especially if you are just drinking it. Some people are downing 2 or 3 glasses of orange juice a day thinking it’ll protect them from disease, but it’s easier to just eat a ton of veggies. You also won’t get fat… haha

That was Jamie Oliver and he was referring to the amount of sugar “children” consume in a year eating processed food and school prepared lunches. I’m quite positive that most adults are consuming the same.

This is no joke: I used to drink OJ mainly because I didn’t like peeling oranges to then eat the slices. It takes time, your fingers and hands get sticky, you sometimes leave big clumps of pith (or whatever it’s called) on, yada-yada…

I don’t peel them now, just rinse them off real good then cut them in to bite-size eighths with a knife. Then bite down to separate the orange from the peel. Your finger tips get a little sticky that way but what the heck. For putting on salads though I cut the peel off the eighths with a knife. Except when I’m making din-din for company. Then I go all Martha Stewart and peel the whole orange so you have nice separated orange slices on top the salad.

That’s something my mom always did, include orange slices with lettuce, tomatos, onions, etc. for a salad. That may not go good if you like say bleu cheese dressing or ranch, but I always use Italian dressing anyways.

But my main point is that after maybe 15 maybe 20 years or so without any OJ I tried some recently. It was good stuff, Simply Orange, but hokey-smokes, man did that liquid OJ pucker my mouth something fierce!!! After all those years of eating whole oranges, mostly mixed with other stuff as well, drinking straight OJ burned my lips, my tongue, my mouth and it was five minutes of drinking and swishing cold water with my eyes puckered closed before I could open them again! Jalapeños make my eyes water but nothing close to what that OJ did. I got great teeth anyways but that made me wonder how much enamel OJ dissolves in people whose teeth aren’t so great. Particularly I guess if OJ isn’t drunk with a straw where you don’t let it touch your teeth.

I also used to be REALLY big on Welch’s grape juice. Till I read the label and noticed how much sugar I was sucking down. Now I can’t be all Boy Scoutish and say I switched to whole grapes, but I did get off the grape juice. By switching to sangria, sherry and tawny port wine!!! Yeah I know, wine is alcohol, alcohol (and fire) bad. But I can’t swill sangria, sherry or port the way I did grape juice. Only a couple (like 2 or 3) ounces of any of the three and I’ve got my grape juice fix, for more than a day. A big 4L bottle of Carlo Rossi Sangria and a 750 mL bottle each of sherry and tawny port last me at least two months. Back in the grape juice days I’d easily burn through a gallon of juice per week.

Now I can’t say I’ve ‘lost’ weight for getting off OJ and grape juice many years ago, but sure as sh*t had I not I would be at least 50 lbs. heavier right now. Maybe even 60 lbs. overweight. And I work construction too, where I burn a lot of calories every day, year ’round. And that brings me to the number one point I’d like to make: daily manual labor. You can’t beat it, or get around it for feeling great. If anyone is sitting at a desk 40 or more hours per week, you’ve got my sympathy and concern because I used to do that in my 20s and 30s before I went into construction. And though back then I’d hit the gym at least three times per week and pound weights, I sleep and feel better now in my mid-50s than I did back then. Cuz everyday I’m lifting weights.

And while I’m thinking about it, for anyone reading Alex’s posts in their 20s or 30s: GET OFF THE FRUIT JUICE (AND SODAS AND LATTES) NOW! If you keep sucking down the fruit juices, sodas and lattes into your 40s or 50s, you will be done for. Everybody’s ‘metabolism’ slows down starting in their 40s, maybe earlier for some people.

So more power to you Alex for helping people out who sit at a desk for 40 or more per week. Everything you point out about the drawbacks of fruit juices is the absolute truth. I found your website and this post because I was wondering recently what the environmental cost was for making and shipping and refrigerating fruit juices all over the US. It seems crazy that all that juice is chasing after the actual fruits, which are better for you anyways. It really was marketing skullduggery that turned drinking fruit juice into a ‘healthy’ thing.

I don’t drink juice, just water and sometimes coffee. But I see where people just drink the juice. And I don’t mean just orange juice. My friend had a banana and strawberry juice thing (pain in the butt to make that) and who carries in the car on a road trip washed strawberries and bananas. But, I can see people drinking juice and those high end concoctions (I did have a couple in my life time) are really filling and regardless of what this author says I couldn’t drink two of them. Lastly, I think people drink a class of juice here and there (I don’t think most people drink like the author says they do) because, in the case of oranges, it can be a pain in the butt to peel the oranges and oranges are like Chinese food , you will want another one a half an hour later. They can be messy, so people opt for the kiwi/cranberry/peach/apricot/blackberry juice in the organic section.
Thanks for reading
God Bless
James

I'm Alexander Heyne. My entire approach to health is this: once you understand the power of your own mind and psychology, and once you get the power of tiny daily habits (rather than willpower and discipline) success is a piece of cake. You can learn more about my story here.

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